President Barack Obama recently renewed his effort to close
the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, calling on Congress to work
with the administration to shut down the prison that holds 166 men caught up in
the wars of 9/11. “I continue to believe that we’ve got to close Guantanamo,”
he said.
“It is expensive. It is inefficient. It hurts us in terms of our international
standing.”

That’s one perspective on Guantanamo—and a valid one. But like
a Rorschach inkblot, there’s another perspective. Indeed, reasonable people
disagree about Guantanamo. What the president sees as “contrary to who we are”
and “a symbol around the world for an America that flouts the rule of law,” what
some see as an example of unchecked power or a stainon America, others see as the least-bad option—a hard answer to a hard question,
a superpower improvising its way toward a workable solution.

ReverseTwo days after his inauguration, the president directed the Pentagon to close the
Guantanamo prison “no later than one year from the date of this order.” But
the American people opposed
the plan to shut down Guantanamo and move the detainees into the United
States by a two-to-one margin. Reflecting that sentiment, the Legion passed a resolutionin 2009 calling on the president “to reverse his decision to close the
Guantanamo Bay facility.”

The president’s closure order was welcomed by America’s
allies, but those being held at Guantanamo were not. Although the European
Parliament passed a measure calling on EU members “to be prepared to accept
Guantanamo inmates,” individual European countries did not exactly jump at the
chance to open their borders to Guantanamo’s residents. A State Department envoycajoled some countries to take Guantanamo parolees into their prison systems,
but he was reassigned in January—an indication he had reached a dead end.

Bipartisan majorities in Congress have repeatedly made it
clear—most recently in the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act—that Guantanamo detainees may not be transferred into the United States.

Sending detainees back to their countries of origin presents
other problems. A 2012 report produced
by the intelligence community conceded that almost 16 percent of the 602
detainees that have cycled through Guantanamo returned to terrorism, and
another 12 percent are suspected of doing so. That’s a recidivism rate of about
28 percent—uncomfortably high when it comes to people willing to bomb
airplanes, buses, schools and sporting events.

Although some detainees have been
cleared to return to their home countries, concerns about host-country security
have stymied such transfers. In 2010, for instance, the president ordered a
full-stop on transfers to Yemen after it was discovered that al Qaeda’s Yemeni
branch (AQAP) was planning to blow up a U.S.-bound flight. However, in May
2013, he lifted that ban.

The Yemeni government is building a
“rehabilitation” facility expressly for the 56 Yemenis held at Guantanamo. But
given that AQAP orchestrated prison
breaks in 2003, 2006 and 2011, Yemen’s capacity to hold Guantanamo
parolees is very much in
doubt, as is the efficacy of terrorist-rehab programs. (A Saudi program—with far more lavish spending and
incentives than Yemen could ever provide—dubiously claims a reintegration rate
of 80 percent.)

Hunger StrikesA hundred detainees are currently on a hunger strike, protesting alleged mishandling
of their Korans— claims the military adamantly denies.

Such tactics and claims are standard operating procedure for
al Qaeda and its ilk—literally. An al-Qaeda training manual offers jihadists guidelinesfor using our justice system—premised on the twin notions that the accused is
innocent until proven guilty and that the state’s power should be checked—against
us. Among the instructions:

·
“Brothers should create an Islamic program for
themselves inside the prison.”

That last piece of advice is perhaps the most compelling
reason Guantanamo detainees should not be transferred to stateside prisons. The
president notes, “No person has ever escaped from one of our super-max or
military prisons.” But escape is not what worries those opposed to stateside
transfer. What worries them is that once mainstreamed into the U.S.
prison system, Guantanamo’s lifers would recruit other inmates to their
jihadist cause and radicalize individuals who might be released—something they
cannot do from Guantanamo.

Radicalization
is a serious enough problem that the Department of Homeland Security announced
in 2011> a federal-state effort to thwart
“terrorist use of prisons for radicalization and recruitment.” Congressional testimonyreveals thatdozens of Americans who were radicalized to
jihadism while in U.S. prisons “have travelled to Yemen to train with al Qaeda.”

Drone Strikes

The Bush administration, like the Obama administration, wanted to close the detention
facility, but realized that the alternatives—letting sworn enemies of the
United States loose, executing them on the battlefield, shipping them back to
untrustworthy regimes—were either self-defeating or contrary to America’s
values.

The Obama administration has found a way around this
conundrum: drones. But the results are not for the squeamish.

The Brookings Institution estimates that, along with the 3,300-plus
militants killed by drones in Pakistan, nearly 600 non-militants may have been
killed. According to a New York Times portraitof the drone war, the White House has embraced a controversial method for
determining civilian casualties that “counts all military-age males in a strike
zone as combatants…unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving
them innocent.”

This, too, has impacted America’s international standing. “In 17 of 20 countries,” a Pew surveyfound, “more than half disapprove of U.S. drone attacks.” According to Pew, the
drone war feeds “a widespread perception that the U.S. acts unilaterally and
does not consider the interests of other countries.”

When placed side by side, these two responses to jihadist terrorism—Guantanamo
and drone strikes—bring us back to that same hard question: Which is more
effective, more ethical, less damaging to our standing—to imprison known and
suspected enemies of the United States without parole, or to execute known and suspected
enemies of the United States without trial?

The Landing Zone is Dowd’s monthly column on national defense and international security featured on the American Legion's website.